AWonder if that’s why they wrote Millennium into a corner?
A[quote name=“ChickenStu” url=“/community/t/114200/the-x-files/50#post_3681844”]I bought the DVD boxed set in January 2010 cause it was a ridiculous bargain. Shortly after I bought it my wife and I went down with the “Swine Flu”. Remember that epidemic that hit the UK? Anyway, I was absolutely SICK AS FUCK. Could barely move. Absolutely horrible illness, and I was lying in bed just watching it to try and stop myself going crazy. At one point my fever spiked at 105 and I was completely delirious. I mean - I was absolutely on a different planet. And I began to hallucinate. During this period - I actually thought Mulder and Scully were in the room with me standing by my bed and I shit you not, I asked Mulder to go downstairs and get me a can of coke from the fridge - or buy me one and put it on the FBI expenses, cause my throat was really sore and wanted something cold. Then my fever came down and I came back to reality - and was able to crawl downstairs and get one for myself. [/quote]
While I’m certainly glad that you through that flu attack alright, the next time you tell that anecdote, there had better have been a frosty cold can of Coca-Cola on your nightstand when your fever broke.
Anyone seen PLAYING GOD with David Duchovny? It’s really not that bad.
AI should probably actually watch this show, I’ve been laughing my ass off at Shaenon Garrity’s recap webcomic and it’s made me want to finally get around to it after years of not having made the time.
So I watched the pilot ep. today. It’s been so long since I saw it and it’s so well done and the casting is so damn spot on as I remember. It’s hard to believe CC is the same person who wrote The After pilot.
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Originally Posted by The Prankster 
Man, that’s not what I heard. Even at the time there were lots of rumours flying around that Carter was a bit of a petty dictator, which is why there was so much turnover early on. Certainly it was always a little ridiculous that the show was billed, at the time, as being somehow sprung purely from the brow of Chris Carter–I remember an article attributing him “as close to sole authorship as is possible with TV”–when it was so obviously the work of a team of talents. I don’t know if Carter actually promoted that idea in the press or if it just somehow stuck and gave Carter a huge ego, but either way he apparently had a propensity for rewriting everyone’s scripts, rarely for the better. I mean the guy rewrote STEPHEN KING for Christ’s sake (I remember an article in EW that lavished praise on King’s episode based on the script and then, a few weeks later, the same critic sheepishly mentioned that the finished episode was disappointing, apparently because Carter rewrote it). It also sounds like Carter shot down or reworked a lot of good ideas, many of which involved actually moving the show’s mythology forward, because despite all the teases at being a serialized show he was determined to make something that suited the old model of television, where nothing ever changes for the sake of syndication. (The one I remember was “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man”, which was supposed to kill off Frojike at the end, but Carter apparently vetoed it–making the episode’s framing story pretty pointless–and insisted on introducing a lot of ambiguity into whether we were REALLY seeing CSM’s backstory, just in case he wanted to go back to it later. So basically he was kind of an early model for JJ Abrams.) Oh, and there was the thing where he adapted the comic “Harsh Realm” without crediting the creators…so maybe he was actually an early model for Shia LaBeouf.
I know, I know, this is mostly rumours from when I was a teenager. Maybe it’s all bullshit and Carter was an awesome dude. I can’t help noticing that he flamed out after The X-Files, though, whereas his writing staff have gone onto solid careers and acclaim.
That’s not what I’ve always read. Carter has always gave his writers credit for taking the show to places he didn’t think of going - Like the stand alone eps. Gilligan has nothing but good things to say about his time spent on the show. I’m sure he had final say and such, but I never heard of him being a dick about it.
Just finished episode 3, Squeeze. Holy cow! That was some creepy shit.
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Originally Posted by Reasor
While I’m certainly glad that you through that flu attack alright, the next time you tell that anecdote, there had better have been a frosty cold can of Coca-Cola on your nightstand when your fever broke.
That would be insanely awesome if that happened!!
(btw, read this one out to my wife - we both had a good chuckle at it!)
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Originally Posted by cccc
That’s not what I’ve always read. Carter has always gave his writers credit for taking the show to places he didn’t think of going - Like the stand alone eps. Gilligan has nothing but good things to say about his time spent on the show. I’m sure he had final say and such, but I never heard of him being a dick about it.
Vince Gilligan is the Nicest Man in the World™ and he may not have wanted to badmouth his former employer. Plus, he came on board during the later years, when the show was slipping and Carter was probably more likely to have realized how badly he relied on his writing talent. But yeah, OK, it’s possible this is all just a grudge with Morgan and Wong. Still, if I had to choose sides I’d probably trust those two over Carter. I do think they were the (vastly) superior writers–Carter ladled on the portentiousness and teases of a larger game, but in the end his stuff tended to be hollow and relied on SHOCKING GAME-CHANGERS that ended up being reset back to nothing. I stand by what I said about him stealing the Harsh Realm guys’ credit and rewriting Stephen King, and while of course I didn’t *want* Frojike to die, having the CSM not kill SOMEONE in that episode made him look like a tool. That was a consistent problem with the show, actually–the bad guys were too afraid to pull the trigger.
Aaaaanyway. Like I say, I fully acknowledge that I don’t know exactly how it went down. But there’s enough about how that show was run that seemed to come from Carter that I’m not a huge fan of the guy, despite his undeniable strengths.
I loved this show so much. I stopped watching regularily when Duchovny left but there were some good stuff in later seasons too. The overall quality of the show was really strong, and the chemistry between Anderson and Duchovny was great. Even that last X-Files movie, even though it felt just like one of those mediocore episodes but just longer, it was so fun to see Mulder and Scully back in action.
I recently saw one of those later episodes on tv, the one that had Burt Reynolds in it. He was playing some sort of spirit of the city in it. A weird and fun episode.
A[quote name=“The Prankster” url=“/community/t/114200/the-x-files/50#post_3682024”]
It also sounds like Carter shot down or reworked a lot of good ideas, many of which involved actually moving the show’s mythology forward, because despite all the teases at being a serialized show he was determined to make something that suited the old model of television, where nothing ever changes for the sake of syndication.[/quote]
So that’s why the hell Mulder was reunited with his lost sister thirty-six times*, with it turning out to be a fake-out every time? Jesus, I got sick of that story arc from all the cockteasing.
*Rough estimate
I forget the name, but my favorite episode of The X-Flies is the one where Mulder and Scully look for a Loch Ness Monster type beast. I’ve always found Nessie and other lake monsters interesting and I thought Mulder and Scully conversion when stuck on a rock was good. Mulder may have an odd view of life, but there is a logic to it.
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Originally Posted by Chaz
I forget the name, but my favorite episode of The X-Flies is the one where Mulder and Scully look for a Loch Ness Monster type beast. I’ve always found Nessie and other lake monsters interesting and I thought Mulder and Scully conversion when stuck on a rock was good. Mulder may have an odd view of life, but there is a logic to it.
Oh yeah that’s one of my favorite episodes too. I too find all these sea and lake monster legends fascinating. Like the African version; Mkele Bmembe or something.
I remember Scully singing “Jeremiah is a Bullfrog” in that one.
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ASat down and watched the first four episodes last night. Random thoughts:
- Having never seen David Duchovny in anything before, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t “Special Agent Joel Robinson.” Huh.
- It’s kind of hilarious when this show makes nods in the direction of ambiguity and possible mundane-ish explanations given that it’s very very obviously rooting for the Agent Mulder view of the world.
- I don’t know what I was expecting for Deep Throat, but it wasn’t “white Morgan Freeman.” Huh.
- Yeah, this Tooms guy is friggin’ creepy. Somehow the low-framerate effect for his stretchy deal just makes it creepier. Like how spiders move in undercranked motion.
- It’s even more hilarious when this show attempts to make Vancouver pass for Iowa by setting up tons of shots that emphasize lush, forested mountains and temperate rainforest. Have you even been to Iowa, cinematographer John S. Bartley?
- It is, however, no longer as hilarious as it probably used to be to see a montage of government spooks ransacking the room of a six-year-old boy because they think he’s a terrorist. How the hell did we get to a point where that’s not comically implausible?
- Also, that’s one hell of a compression algorithm the aliens use to fit all that data on a few dozen sheets of hand-written 1s and 0s.
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Originally Posted by The Prankster
Vince Gilligan is the Nicest Man in the World™ and he may not have wanted to badmouth his former employer. Plus, he came on board during the later years, when the show was slipping and Carter was probably more likely to have realized how badly he relied on his writing talent. But yeah, OK, it’s possible this is all just a grudge with Morgan and Wong. Still, if I had to choose sides I’d probably trust those two over Carter. I do think they were the (vastly) superior writers–Carter ladled on the portentiousness and teases of a larger game, but in the end his stuff tended to be hollow and relied on SHOCKING GAME-CHANGERS that ended up being reset back to nothing. I stand by what I said about him stealing the Harsh Realm guys’ credit and rewriting Stephen King, and while of course I didn’t *want* Frojike to die, having the CSM not kill SOMEONE in that episode made him look like a tool. That was a consistent problem with the show, actually–the bad guys were too afraid to pull the trigger.
Aaaaanyway. Like I say, I fully acknowledge that I don’t know exactly how it went down. But there’s enough about how that show was run that seemed to come from Carter that I’m not a huge fan of the guy, despite his undeniable strengths.
Well, the way I look at it is: CC invented this concept, wrote the pilot, invented these characters, oversaw the evolution of its tone and look. No one else did that and it’s been often imitated, never duplicated. In his defense, TXF was the first show that had a major online fandom and he unfortunately listened to those idiots, who told him that the conspiracy stuff was better when it involved the characters’ family. Also, as I’ve said before, I blame Spotnitz for a lot of the sappy sentimentality.
Two of my favorite shows growing up were Twilight Zone and Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and TXF drew on both and couldn’t have been more tailor made for me, so it’s probably my favorite show of all time (True Detective and BB not withstanding), so I’m going to defend it and CC to the bitter end. 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaz
I forget the name, but my favorite episode of The X-Flies is the one where Mulder and Scully look for a Loch Ness Monster type beast. I’ve always found Nessie and other lake monsters interesting and I thought Mulder and Scully conversion when stuck on a rock was good. Mulder may have an odd view of life, but there is a logic to it.
That was Quagmire, and I love that conversation. Gillian A had some t-shirts made that said “COTR” (conversation on the rock) and auctioned them off at conventions for charity. I’m pretty sure CC wrote this episode, and it put into words Mulder’s Ahab qualities, which has been with the show since the beginning and to me seems to have gone into his creation.
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Originally Posted by felix
I remember Scully singing “Jeremiah is a Bullfrog” in that one.
That was Wrong Turn, where they end up in the woods with that ancient invisible monster.
Quote:
Originally Posted by commodorejohn
Sat down and watched the first four episodes last night. Random thoughts:
- Having never seen David Duchovny in anything before, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t “Special Agent Joel Robinson.” Huh.
- It’s kind of hilarious when this show makes nods in the direction of ambiguity and possible mundane-ish explanations given that it’s very very obviously rooting for the Agent Mulder view of the world.
- I don’t know what I was expecting for Deep Throat, but it wasn’t “white Morgan Freeman.” Huh.
- Yeah, this Tooms guy is friggin’ creepy. Somehow the low-framerate effect for his stretchy deal just makes it creepier. Like how spiders move in undercranked motion.
- It’s even more hilarious when this show attempts to make Vancouver pass for Iowa by setting up tons of shots that emphasize lush, forested mountains and temperate rainforest. Have you even been to Iowa, cinematographer John S. Bartley?
- It is, however, no longer as hilarious as it probably used to be to see a montage of government spooks ransacking the room of a six-year-old boy because they think he’s a terrorist. How the hell did we get to a point where that’s not comically implausible?
- Also, that’s one hell of a compression algorithm the aliens use to fit all that data on a few dozen sheets of hand-written 1s and 0s.
All its flaws notwithstanding, Season 1 is my favorite.
Quote:
Originally Posted by commodorejohn
Sat down and watched the first four episodes last night. Random thoughts:
- It is, however, no longer as hilarious as it probably used to be to see a montage of government spooks ransacking the room of a six-year-old boy because they think he’s a terrorist. How the hell did we get to a point where that’s not comically implausible?
Speaking of The X-Flies and terrorism, I thought it was weird in the episode with Brian Cranston, that Mulder thought checking up on people buying large amounts of fertilizer was a waste of time. I’m pretty sure it aired after the Oklahoma City attack. Still a great episode.
I’m not sure how old you all are but during it’s first season or so there where no message boards as we have here, but they had bulletin boards. X-Files had one and I’d be on it all the time. Hard to believe how far the Net has come in the spam of 15 years or so. It was probably the first show that had a internet presence.
AJust watched “Ice.” It’s very, very obviously doing a riff on “Who Goes There?”/The Thing, but it’s at least a very solid riff, within the bounds of what you can do on a TV show. Some solid performances pretty much all around (though sports-fan scientist guy never seemed like he belonged in this kind of story,) but I have to give serious props to Felicity Huffman - her absolute freakout at the end is well-done, and she does the most unsettlingly convincing portrayal of an irrationally violent person being forcibly restrained I’ve ever seen. Yeesh.
The CGI worms were distracting, though, all the more so because they used real grubs for half the shots.